Your First Trip: End-to-End Walkthrough

This is the workflow you'll repeat hundreds of times as an advisor — create a trip, add bookings, invoice your client, and track your commission. Once you've done it once in JourneyFuse, it becomes second nature. Let's walk through the whole thing with a real-world example.

We'll follow a sample trip: The Garcia family wants a 7-night Caribbean cruise with pre-cruise hotel and airport transfers.

Step 1: Create the Trip

Click New Trip from the Trips page (or the quick-add button in the top nav). You'll see these fields:

• Trip Name — something you'll recognize at a glance. "Garcia — Caribbean Cruise Nov 2026" beats "Trip #47."
• Client — start typing and pick from your existing clients. Don't have them yet? Click Quick Add right from the dropdown to create a new client without leaving the form.
• Destination — type a city, country, or region and JourneyFuse geocodes it automatically. You'll see it on your map view later.
• Start / End Dates — the travel dates
• Deposit Due Date and Final Payment Date — these drive your payment reminders and dashboard alerts
• Notes — internal notes only you and your team see
• Hero Image — shows up on proposals and the client portal. A great resort photo or destination shot makes a big difference.

Tip: If you book the same type of trip often (e.g., Disney World, Alaska cruises), save time by selecting a supplier template during trip creation. It pre-populates common booking types so you're not starting from scratch.

Step 2: Understand Trip Statuses

Every trip moves through a lifecycle. JourneyFuse tracks this automatically, but you can update it manually too:

Status	What It Means
Lead	Initial inquiry — nothing confirmed yet
Planning	You're actively building the trip
Deposited	Client paid their deposit
Paid	Paid in full
Traveling	Client is on the trip right now
Closed	Trip is complete

Your dashboard uses these statuses to show you what needs attention — "3 trips awaiting deposit" is a lot more useful than a flat list.

Step 3: Add Bookings

This is where the trip comes to life. Open your trip and start adding bookings for each component. JourneyFuse supports these booking types: flight, cruise, hotel, resort, park, dining, transfer, excursion, insurance, and other.

For the Garcia trip, you'd add:

1. Cruise — Royal Caribbean, Harmony of the Seas, Nov 14–21
2. Hotel — Marriott Fort Lauderdale, Nov 13 (pre-cruise night)
3. Transfer — FLL Airport to Marriott, Nov 13
4. Transfer — Marriott to Port Everglades, Nov 14
5. Insurance — Allianz travel protection for the family

For each booking, fill in:

• Supplier — searchable dropdown with your saved suppliers. Start typing "Royal" and it pops right up.
• Confirmation Number — add it now or come back when the supplier confirms
• Dates — check-in/check-out or departure/arrival
• Pre-Tax Price and Total Price — JourneyFuse keeps both so your invoices and commission math are accurate
• Commission — auto-calculated based on your supplier's commission rate and your split percentage. More on this below.
• Notes — "Deck 7, Ocean View Balcony, confirmation pending" — whatever you need to remember

Tip: Use the AI Import feature instead of typing everything manually. Paste a booking confirmation email or upload a PDF, and JourneyFuse extracts the supplier, dates, confirmation number, and pricing automatically. It's a massive time saver, especially for cruises with complex confirmation documents.

Step 4: Track Your Commission

Every booking has commission fields that auto-populate based on your supplier settings:

• Gross Commission — the total commission the supplier pays on this booking
• Agent Amount — your take after the host agency split
• Applied Split % — pulled from your defaults (you can override per booking if a particular supplier has a special deal)
• Status — tracks where the money is in the pipeline:
  • Estimated — booking isn't confirmed yet, this is your projection
  • Pending — booking confirmed, waiting for travel to complete
  • Outstanding — travel complete, commission not yet received
  • Received — money in hand
• Expected Date — when you expect the supplier to pay
• Date Received — when you actually got paid

Tip: Update commission statuses as they change. Your Commission Reports pull from these statuses, so keeping them current means your revenue dashboards are always accurate.

Step 5: Explore the Trip Detail Tabs

Your trip detail page has seven tabs that organize everything:

• Overview — bookings, travelers, key dates, and trip status at a glance
• Invoices — create and manage client invoices, track payments
• Documents — upload contracts, confirmation PDFs, passport copies
• Communications — email history with your client for this trip
• Cards — credit card authorization forms collected from clients
• Activity — an audit log of every change made to the trip
• Share — itinerary and proposal sharing settings

Step 6: Invoice Your Client

Head to the Invoices tab and create an invoice. You can base it on your booking totals or set custom line items. Set your deposit amount, due dates, and send the invoice link to your client.

For the Garcia cruise, a typical invoice might look like:

• Deposit: $2,000 due at booking
• Second Payment: $3,500 due 90 days before sailing
• Final Balance: $1,200 due 45 days before sailing

Clients pay through a branded payment page — no awkward "can you Venmo me?" conversations. JourneyFuse tracks every payment automatically.

If you have multiple travelers splitting the cost (say, the Garcias are splitting with grandparents), you can create split invoices so each party pays their share directly.

See Invoices and Split Payments for the full breakdown.

Step 7: Get Paid

After the Garcias sail and get home, your commission journey wraps up:

1. Update the booking commission status from Pending to Outstanding
2. When the supplier check or direct deposit hits, update to Received and log the Date Received
3. Check your Commission Reports to see the full picture — what's been paid, what's outstanding, and what's coming up

That's the cycle: trip created, bookings added, client invoiced, commission tracked, money received. Every trip follows this same flow, whether it's a weekend getaway or a 20-person group cruise.

Tips for Your First Few Trips

1. Set up your top 5 suppliers first. Get their commission rates dialed in (Settings → Suppliers) and every booking after that auto-calculates.

2. Use trip statuses religiously. Moving trips from "Planning" to "Deposited" to "Paid" keeps your dashboard useful instead of cluttered.

3. Add the confirmation number later. Don't let a missing confirmation number stop you from creating the booking. Add the skeleton now, fill in details as they come.

4. Upload documents as you get them. Throw every confirmation email, contract, and receipt into the Documents tab. Future-you will be grateful when a client calls with a question 6 months later.

5. Check your commission math on the first trip. Verify that your supplier rates and splits are calculating correctly. Once they're right, you can trust them on every trip going forward.

FAQ

Can I create a trip without a client? Yes — assign a client later when you're ready. This is useful when you're spec'ing out options before a client commits.

What's the difference between pre-tax price and total price? Pre-tax is the base fare before taxes and fees. Total is what the client actually pays. Commission is typically calculated on the pre-tax amount, which is why JourneyFuse tracks both.

Can I override the commission rate on a single booking? Absolutely. The supplier default is just a starting point. Click into the commission section on any booking and change the rate, split, or amount.

How do I handle a booking with no commission (like a restaurant reservation)? Just leave the commission fields blank or set them to zero. Not every booking earns commission, and that's fine — it still belongs on the trip for your client's itinerary.

Can multiple agents work on the same trip? Yes. Any agent in your workspace can view and edit trips. The trip's assigned agent gets the commission credit, but collaboration is built in.